NEWS
Chernobyl to Become Official Tourist Attraction
Source: National Geographic
Ukraine’s president has announced Chernobyl – the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster – will become an official tourist attraction.
Chernobyl has seen a rise in tourism ever since an HBO mini-series documenting the nuclear disaster premiered in May, with local tour companies offering everything from guided bus trips into the exclusion zone and visits to abandoned villages surrounding Chernobyl.
“Chernobyl is a unique place on the planet where nature revives after a global man-made disaster, where there is a real “ghost town”. We have to show this place to the world: scientists, ecologists, historians, tourists,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy revealed via his official website.
According to CNN, on April 26, 1986 a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded “forcing a region-wide evacuation and sending radioactive fallout billowing across Europe.”
“We must give this territory of Ukraine a new life,” President Zelensky said of the area that was once at the center of a 1,000 square mile exclusion zone. “Until now, Chernobyl was a negative part of Ukraine’s brand. It’s time to change it.”
According to the Associated Press, President Zelensky inaugurated a giant structure built to confine radioactive debris at the power plant’s Reactor no. 4. The structure is designed to safeguard radioactive debris and prevent further crumbling of the reactor with the final project costing approximately $2.5 billion.
